


A Specter-Ross Affair

by FrivolousSuits



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Cheating, Christmas, Drunk Kissing, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Language of Flowers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Song Lyrics, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 01:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16924392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrivolousSuits/pseuds/FrivolousSuits
Summary: “You ordered an ‘extra-hot, extra-wet cappuccino, single-origin, properly layered, to-go and ready five minutes ago to make up for your service speed or lack thereof.’”In which Mike is a barista, Rachel is a lawyer, and Harvey is paid excessive amounts of money to plan their joyous Christmas wedding.





	A Specter-Ross Affair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sway/gifts).



> The theme song of this fic is ["All of Me"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=450p7goxZqg) by John Legend, aka the canon Machel wedding song.
> 
> The Marvey plot is inspired by the Hallmark movie _When Sparks Fly_ , which stars Meghan Markle as the maid of honor/holiday wedding planner. The Sonna subplot is inspired by the romcom _27 Dresses_ , starring Katherine Heigl as a 27-time bridesmaid who winds up falling for a groom.
> 
> This fic has some scattered references to recent canon details (such as Machel’s unusual attempt at wedding counseling and Louis’s prurient interest in both bananas and the _Wall Street Journal_ ). However the main things to know are that Katherine Heigl now stars as Samantha, a lawyer who strongly resembles early-season Harvey, and that Samantha and Donna are endlessly in love.
> 
> (Me, a delusional shipper? Never!)

Love is just a particularly socially accepted form of fraud.

It’s a series of increasingly complex and fragile deceptions between two or more people and, more alarmingly, between each participant and their own deluded subconscious. This is one of Harvey Specter’s cardinal rules, sandwiched neatly between “always let the client think they’re right” and “assume the client is never right.”

Right now, in this overpriced mall coffee shop, Harvey takes a second to remind himself of that rule.

“What did you just say to me?”

“I said you can’t harass my coworker just because she made your coffee the way you ordered it.”

“No, before that.”

“You ordered an ‘extra-hot, extra-wet cappuccino, single-origin, properly layered, to-go and ready five minutes ago to make up for your service speed or lack thereof.’”

Harvey stares at the barista. He’s blond, blue-eyed, young but with a hardened customer service smile, and he just repeated Harvey’s coffee order almost-verbatim, sarcasm intact, the same way twice in a row.

Still, the kid missed the vanilla.

“All right, Einstein, the fact remains that I’ve been putting vanilla in my coffee for a solid decade, so the chances that I forgot it now are pretty damn low–”

“Yeah, I know you ordered vanilla in your iced coffee last time you were here, and vanilla in your latte the time before that. I just figured you got better taste, because vanilla in your cappuccino? Seriously, dude?”

“Don’t call me dude” are the first words out of Harvey’s mouth, but then he processes the whole speech and stops short. “You remember all my orders?”

The barista snorts. “Yeah.”

“I’m flattered by the close attention.” He tips his head to the side, a smile of his own twitching at his lips as he ponders this turn of events.

Harvey’s got years of experience in this arena, as an up-close spectator if not a combatant himself, and so he’s certain that love is nothing but an ugly fraud. He’ll settle for sex. “Could I have your number?”

The barista’s eyes widen. “My number?”

“Your number.”

Interest flashes across his face before hardening into determination, and Harvey’s heart leaps too high, too damn high for this kid he’s only seen three times and never before remembered.

“My number is zero, a.k.a. the number of times you’ve tipped after terrorizing my colleagues, even though you’re a banker, consultant or lawyer and you probably make more in an hour than I do in a week.”

He scans Harvey’s Tom Ford suit with a not entirely judgmental eye. Harvey would press on that crack, except he checks his watch. Five minutes to go.

With a skeptical lift of his eyebrow, Harvey picks up his pitiful cappuccino and turns to go, though not before correcting the barista. “Wedding planner.”

“What?”

“I’m a wedding planner.” Mike flinches as Harvey hits him with his own megawatt smirk, trained on over a decade’s worth of intractable clients. “You’re not wrong about the money, though.”

With that, he swans out of the shop.

* * *

With three minutes to go he picks out a table out in the mall’s glass-covered atrium, right by a palm tree– an unusual choice of greenery for the Manhattan Financial District, but then Harvey’s never cared for anything usual. He sets down his coffee and pulls out his tablet, prepared to take notes just in case they show up this time.

One minute to go.

Harvey drafts a memo outlining five reasons why, traditionally, brides refrain from bringing their riding crops to the ceremony. Donna asked him for it, in honor of the Sazs-Litt wedding.

He glances at the clock again. It’s one minute past the scheduled start time.

At five minutes past Harvey sighs, refreshes his email, and checks his texts, only to find no explanation. It’s the third time this new couple’s stood him up, and Harvey’s tempted to consider dropping them, though planning this wedding’s a favor to Donna’s girlfriend’s best friend’s daughter. Seven minutes pass, and really, he should cut them out.

But then he’d be out of easy excuses for coming downtown and bothering a particular barista.

Harvey hates indecision, but he wavers between calling this meeting off and sticking it out. His client halts that thought process by, shockingly enough, showing up.

“Rachel Zane.” The bride-to-be strides right up and reaches out her hand. “I’m glad our schedules finally aligned.”

He gives her a firm handshake. “Harvey Specter, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“My fiance’s coming in a minute, he’s just signing out of work,” she explains, taking a seat beside him. “I’m sorry it’s been so hard to arrange a time, I really am excited about this whole process. It’s just that a corporate lawyer’s schedule can get pretty chaotic.”

There’s a defensive edge to how she says it. He tries to put her at ease: “Trust me, Rachel, I sympathize entirely–”

“Mike!” Her face animatedly brightens as she looks over Harvey’s shoulder. Harvey turns around and . . .

There’s the barista from before. Mike. Michael James Ross, scheduled to become Michael James Zane-Ross at the first convenient moment. He’s removed his apron to reveal a superhero T-shirt, a _Robin_ T-shirt, bright red with the black-and-gold R in the center. It’s a far cry from his fiancee’s sober skirt suit, and it makes Harvey smile.

On the other hand, his fourth rule– “Make an excellent first impression at all costs”– is shot to hell, and for the first time in his career, so is his fifth rule: “Never flirt with clients, even if they start it.”

Harvey starts to stand for a handshake, but Mike ignores that and takes his place across the table, at Rachel’s side.

“All right,” Harvey says with an unflagging grin, trying to charm his way back on course; for better or worse, this isn’t the most awkward scene he’s had to defuse. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got in mind?”

He decides to ignore Mike, to the extent that he can without being obvious. He won’t show any unusual interest in Mike, and it’s easy because Rachel jumps right in and starts talking, and talking.

She’s a self-proclaimed lifelong bride-to-be, Harvey knows the type, and when he asks whether she started planning the ceremony at age six she laughs and tells him she was four. She knows exactly what she wants, she’s had all this planned out for years.

“So my job should be easy,” Harvey jokes.

“Exactly!”

“So do you have an overall concept? Don’t worry if you don’t–”

“I absolutely do.” She folds her hands and straightens up, eyes glittering as she announces her master plan. “I want–” she glances over at Mike, who smiles back only a second too late– “a big Christmas wedding!”

Harvey wants to walk out right now.

See, there’s only one form of fraud that’s got more society-wide traction than true love: Christmas. Harvey hates the tinsel, he hates the carols, he hates all the clients who ask for Santa to officiate their weddings, he hates the holly and ribbon on every winter floral arrangement. He hates the commercialization, the soulless cliches, the false promises of hope and joy.

What he tells Rachel is, “That’s a perfect concept.”

On probing further, he finds that Rachel does quite literally mean Christmas, December 24th and 25th of this year, and that she’s already got extensive opinions on the cocktails and reception menu, and that she’s written up her specifications for the external cake design though she hasn’t yet chosen a filling. Mike stays quiet through it all, his smart mouth strangely mute.

“What are you thinking for the venue? I’d recommend going indoors, but beyond that your options are open.”

“Mike’s got a church in Queens for the wedding,” she promptly replies. “And for a reception the next day, I’ll want the Plaza.”

“. . . The Plaza.”

“Ideally the Grand Ballroom, though I’d settle for the Terrace.”

“You want the Plaza. On Christmas.”

Rachel laughs coyly, tucking a curl behind her ear. “Well, I know it’s a big ask. It’s just that I’ve been dreaming of that, ever since the first time my mom read me an Eloise book.”

“It’s a _very_ big ask,” Harvey agrees, straining to keep the incredulity off his face and not quite succeeding.

“But you’re paid like a banker or consultant,” Mike interjects. “Can’t you pull it off?”

Rachel whips her head around and frowns at him. Mike immediately draws all of Harvey’s attention too, but Harvey’s not frowning, just meeting his challenging stare. A whole conversation passes between them.

Harvey notes that Mike quit making fun of lawyers now that Rachel’s here.

“I’ll make it happen,” he says, still looking at Mike.

 _Game on_.

The gears start turning, because now he’s on a mission to get an impossible venue on an impossible date, less because he wants to make Rachel’s childhood dream come true than because he wants to show Mike he can.

He starts plotting and counting up favors to trade, even as Rachel bubbles over about her other ideas, how she wants poinsettias on the altar and mistletoe over it.

“To make all this more personal,” he finally cuts in, “can you tell me how you two got together?”

They both start chuckling.

“Well, actually we got off to a bad start,” Rachel says, leaning in with a conspiratorial air. “We used to both be paralegals at the same firm. Now, he has this perfect memory, but I didn’t know that, so early on I accused him of not remembering something I said properly and he proceeded to recite back everything I had done!”

What a coincidence.

“And that was when . . .”

She trails off and gestures to Mike, who steps in right on cue: “I said, ‘I love you.’”

“But then,” Rachel says, breathlessly taking over again, “I had this rule that I didn’t date the guys I worked with, but we kept bickering about the littlest things, and we both _knew_ there was a tension between us that we couldn’t deny. One thing led to another, we started dating, and we’ve been together ever since.”

She turns towards Mike and melts into a starry-eyed sigh. Harvey looks over and finds that Mike’s got the same softness in his eyes.

“Sounds like a fairy tale,” Harvey observes mildly.

But goddammit, he can’t miss the irony. He doubted Mike’s genius, Mike flaunted it in his face, and now Harvey’s tangled in his own don’t-sleep-with-clients rule. If their timing was better, if they had met just a couple years earlier, maybe it’d be the two of them sitting down and planning out a wedding now . . .

He shuts down that train of thought. He’s never considered getting married before, and he’s not going to start pining now over some random kid, a random, probably heterosexual kid currently planning his wedding to a lovely, if over-optimistic woman.

That settles that.

Harvey collects the rest of the information he’ll need, the expected size of the guest list and all that. Mike keeps making snide comments about Harvey’s abilities, and Harvey stops pretending they’re endearing instead of obnoxious. He plays the consummate professional.

And if he’s still overly determined to get the Plaza for this Christmas, it’s for the entirely non-sexual thrill of rubbing it in Mike’s face.

* * *

Trouble’s brewing in the light blue halls of A Specter Affair’s event design office, as senior planner Alex Williams slams his hands down on Harvey’s desk. “Harvey.”

“Yes.”

“ _You_ _cannot have the Plaza_.”

“I haven’t even called yet–”

“What were you even thinking?” Alex snaps, now recoiling to instead pace around the office. “You of all people should know the Plaza’s booked through the week of Christmas for the next five years, minimum!”

A flash of red catches Harvey’s eye, and now Donna’s storming in and planting herself in the doorway. “Harvey, you can’t have the Plaza.”

“Oh, come on–”

“Do you understand–” she raises one finger to shush him– “that if you get a date at the Plaza this year then Samantha’s going to want our engagement party there, and once she gets that she’ll demand Westminster Abbey for the ceremony, and then she will be absolutely _insufferable_?”

Harvey cocks his head to the side. “If she’s insufferable, why are you marrying her?”

“Because she’s the female version of you, darling.”

“Ooh,” Alex winces. “Walked right into that one.”

Harvey rolls his eyes. “Insignificant logistic quibbles aside, we’re going to get the Plaza this Christmas. Either of the two main rooms will do.”

Scoffing, Alex throws up his hands. “Never gonna happen, Harvey. I don’t know why you told a client it’s possible–”

“Donna,” he says in a sugar-sweet voice.

“Yes, Harvey?” She plays along, equally saccharine.

He lets her hang in suspense before saying, “I’ll take over the Sazs-Litt wedding for you if you make the Plaza happen.”

She scoffs. “Oh, that’s playing dirty.”

“No more whip memos,” he says, wide-eyed and earnest. “No more mud samples . . .”

“Ugh, fine.” She spins around on her heel and strides out, calling back. “Give me two weeks.”

Alex looks at her, then Harvey. “You know this is never going to work, right?”

* * *

A week later, Donna sashays in and slaps a file on Harvey’s desk. “Here’s the Sazs-Litt papers, for your own safety I’d recommend wearing gloves.”

Harvey leans back in his chair with an easy grin. “So you got the Plaza?”

“Terrace Room, Christmas day, I’m awesome.”

“That you are.”

“Incidentally, is Dana still our lawyer? I need to speak with her about a possible opening for litigation.”

Harvey glances up. “On our part or the Plaza’s?”

She stares right back. “Ours, obviously.”

He decides not to ask.

“Yeah, she is.” He scrawls Scottie’s number on a post-it note and hands it to her.

She takes it. “You know, I’m surprised you’re okay with blackmail this early into a job.”

“Thank you, Donna.”

He doesn’t give her whatever reaction she’s fishing for. She leaves him alone, though not without shooting him a weird look.

* * *

Harvey has Rachel’s number. She’s the one he should call about this plot twist.

Instead, he drives down to an overpriced coffee shop in the Financial District, and he marches in, prepared to preen so hard . . .

But Mike’s nowhere to be seen. Harvey asks one of the other baristas on duty, and she informs him that Mike’s just not on shift today.

Harvey shouldn’t feel crushed like a used paper coffee cup, but here he is.

After a moment the shock fades, and he calls Rachel like he was always supposed to, and she squeals over the news before composing herself and thanking him like a mature lawyer.

“I can’t wait for this wedding,” she tells him.

If Harvey’s honest with himself– and he does try to be, if only for efficiency– he did all this for Mike, not just to spite him. He likes the kid. But it’s an undoubtedly doomed passion, and not even of grand Romeo-and-Juliet proportions. No star-crossed lovers here. Just a slightly lonely wedding planner with a taste for antagonism and a sad, unrequited crush.

Harvey orders a vanilla cappuccino, savors the flavor, and lets all thoughts of Mike Ross fade like the foam dissolving into his poorly-layered coffee.

* * *

Before their next meeting, Harvey arrives early and stakes out a table in a quiet corner. Though he drained a 20-oz latte with two shots of vanilla a couple hours back, he’s craving coffee.

“Hey.”

Harvey looks up, and Mike’s rushing to his table alone.

“Where’s Rachel?” Harvey glances to the top of the escalators; Rachel works at Wakefield Cady, a firm with offices right above the mall, and could come down to join them at any second.

“She’ll be down in a sec,” Mike says. “Um . . . may I?”

A moment too late, he invites Mike to sit down. Harvey doesn’t say anything, just waves his hand in what he intends as a gesture of cavalier apathy, and then wonders whether he should engage in small talk, something unobjectionable, something devoid of the undue interest that he might have felt for Mike in a past life.

Mike beats him to it. “I’m surprised you got the Plaza.”

“Yeah?” he says neutrally.

“Your ego wrote a check that your body could in fact cash.”

Harvey rescinds all previous proclamations of disinterest.

When Mike asks _how_ he pulled it off, Harvey immediately retorts, “It’s classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Mike’s eyes light up as he recognizes Harvey’s _Top Gun_ quote, as he recognizes that Harvey recognized _his_ _Top Gun_ quote, and Harvey could watch those eyes forever. He starts to fall, losing himself in the depths of that ocean blue . . .

His phone buzzes. He checks it and finds an apology from Rachel.

“She won’t be joining us today.”

Harvey expects Mike to be annoyed, maybe call Rachel himself and coax her down, but he just slumps back in his chair. “Cool. So what do we do?”

“You pick the colors.”

Mike’s jaw drops in comic bewilderment. “ _I_ have to do the colors?”

“You’re a grown man, you’ll get through it.”

Harvey pulls out a folder full of palettes and lays them on the table, collections of cream and lavender swatches, in accordance with Rachel’s initial request. Mike looks at them one by one, contrasting lavender and ivory with lavender and off-white. One particularly daring selection has lilac and butter yellow, and Harvey threw in some rose gold for variety.

After a few minutes’ meditation Mike plucks one out. “This one’s fine.”

“Fine?”

“It’s great.”

Harvey agrees it’s great, he assembled it himself, but he also knows Mike doesn’t buy it. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m a great liar!”

“Fine, then, you’re specifically terrible at lying to me,” Harvey amends with a smirk. “Okay, what’s the issue?”

Mike sighs and rubs his face. “They’re all nice colors, I could see them at a wedding, but they’re. . . frilly. Low on substance.”

“They don’t feel like you,” Harvey concludes.

“Yeah. But,” he adds, “don’t worry about me.”

Harvey blinks. “What?”

“I don’t care the way Rachel does. What matters is that we make her happy.”

Harvey’s dealt with at least a hundred bridezillas. When a groom tells him that his fiancee’s the one who matters, Harvey listens, as a matter of good service and self-preservation. He prioritizes the bride.

He sweeps all his palettes back into their file.

“Dude!”

He scowls at Mike.

“ _Sir – _ ” that makes Harvey snort– “those were all perfect for Rachel.”

“I’m not going to let you settle without knowing your options,” he counters. “So consider this.”

Mike lets out a long-suffering sigh. “What?”

“Plum. A rich, deep plum, as substantial as you can get. It’s balanced with white to feel fresh and _real_.” After a moment, he adds, “Like you.”

“What about her lavender?”

Harvey shrugs. “Accent color. We’ll get it in there.”

“On a technicality.”

“Yeah. If necessary, you can defend yourself in a court of law.”

“I’d prefer for my fiancee not to sue me in the first place,” Mike jokes.

“Don’t worry,” Harvey returns with a magnanimous grin. “I’m looking out for you.”

Mike tries to say something, only to have it stick in his throat, and suddenly it’s not funny anymore.

“What else do you want for the wedding?” Harvey asks, tilting his head.

Mike groans.

“Well, that’s auspicious.”

“No, it’s just–” He breaks off. “It’s unfair to put this on you.”

“Whatever it is, I bet I can take it.”

“I hate Christmas.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Harvey tries to swallow down his manic laughter but doesn’t wholly succeed, and Mike must misinterpret his disbelief.

“I know,” he says apologetically, “it’s ridiculous! But I haven’t liked Christmas since I was eleven, and if you can tone down this wedding just a bit, I’d–”

“Wait, since you were eleven? That’s very specific, did Santa fill your stocking with coal that year?”

Mike freezes. “Actually, my parents died right before Christmas.”

“. . . Oh.” His shoulders fall, and a lump strangely like a sob lodges in Harvey’s throat. “God, Mike, I’m so sorry.”

Mike’s smiling at him, a little frozen smile. “No, it’s fine, it happened so long ago.”

He’s lying again.

Harvey knows he’s lying again, but he grasps at the opening Mike gives him. “Yeah, well, this is the year you fight off the holiday blues. I mean, what better way to spend Christmas than celebrating your wedding?"

"That's Rachel's theory."

"It's a good one. You'll have the biggest party of your life, surrounded by hundreds of friends.”

Mike chuckles. “Um, hundreds is a little high. Most of the list is Zane family friends.”

“How many people are on your side?”

“Well,” Mike stammers, “I know around twenty of them from when Rachel and I worked at Pearson-Hardman? But we got pushed out for being together, and then Rachel went to law school and moved to Wakefield Cady and I moved to the barista job, and I fell out of touch, I guess.”

“Would you still call any of them friends?”

“Um.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” Harvey sighs and tries to find a bright spot. “But you must have other people coming.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, brightening up. “Trevor and Jenny. We’ve been friends for ages, they’re going to be my best man and woman.”

“Well, that’s great,” Harvey says, voice upbeat. He shuts up again and waits for a list of other friends and family members, all the other people in Mike’s life who’ll surely come to support him . . .

It never comes.

* * *

Harvey lets his meeting with Mike run over, peppering him with questions until he stops looking like a kicked puppy, and he doesn’t even bill him for the extra time. That act of kindness alone breaks several of Harvey’s personal rules and his firm’s by-laws, forcing him to admit that he’s got a Mike Ross problem.

He figures repeated exposure might help. The more he learns about Mike Ross, the more flaws he’ll see, the more flies in the ointment. The more he finds out, the faster he’ll get over this infatuation.

That’s why he starts strolling into a Financial District coffee shop every couple days, without any pretense of an appointment.

Sometimes there’s no line, and Harvey dallies at the register for five, ten minutes, defending the increasingly absurd orders he concocts just for these meetings. Sometimes he and Mike start quote battles, reaching for clever references. Sometimes– his favorite times– there’s a crowd, and Mike’s hassled and lonely at the eye of the storm, and then he softens a little upon seeing Harvey walk in, and then Harvey hits him with one good line after placing his order and tips Mike into a belly laugh.

“This morning two of my other clients asked me to look into prune cocktails,” he says one day.

Next time: “They want me to make a gift registry listing desired types of mud, to replace their previous list of fetish gear.”

“They want the last ten issues of the _Wall Street Journal_ in their honeymoon suite as well as a draft of the next unpublished issue. I was hoping this was a grab for inside information, but no, it’s also an . . . aid.”

There’s another rule up in flames– his custom of privilege, of never making fun of clients publicly and certainly not in front of other clients, but Harvey can’t bring himself to regret it. Not when he gets to make Mike laugh and then sit down with his hot drink and savor the smile still lingering around his lips from afar. Like some kind of secret admirer.

Like some kind of groupie.

That thought crashes in on his sixth or so visit, and he can’t help thinking about his mother, wrecking his father’s life because she overinterpreted a stupid crush. He slinks out of the coffee shop without saying goodbye, feeling dirty as trampled snow.

* * *

Harvey heads out early to the next meeting and tells himself it’s because he’s afraid of being late. He pretends that all he feels when Rachel texts to tell him she can’t make it is minor annoyance.

He walks into the mall with only a few minutes to spare and picks out his table. Mike’s nowhere to be seen.

“Mr. Specter?”

A woman’s smiling at him, bending down and pretending to be sorry for the intrusion, and Harvey immediately senses a Mother of the Bride.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m Laura Zane, Rachel’s mom.”

Got it in one.

Harvey gets up and shakes her hand firmly, endeavoring to make the best first impression possible; it’s always easier to have the parents on your side, especially in cases like this where they’re footing the whole damn bill.

She sits down and launches right into it. “I’m so thrilled, they’re a perfect match. I know it doesn’t quite look like it on the surface–”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

That throws Laura off.

“Well,” she says with a delicate wince, “it looks like he’s not quite her equal, since she’s an associate and he’s . . .”

Harvey can’t help it, he turns up the brightness on his grin so it’s blinding. “In customer service?”

“Well . . . yes. But the truth is Mike will apply to law schools as soon as he and Rachel can afford it on their own. My husband and I offered to help, but he wouldn’t hear of it, and I think there’s something noble in that.”

Harvey nods, pride swelling warm in his chest.

“Anyway,” Laura prattles on, waving her hand as if none of that matters in the slightest, “I’m so glad Rachel’s found the man of her dreams. You know, she’s been wanting this whole Plaza wedding since she was little–”

“Since you read her the Eloise books.”

“Exactly! Which is why–” she leans in to thwart any eavesdropping strangers– “I’m a little surprised that she’s not more involved now.”

So is Harvey, but he’s obliged to protect his client. “Well, you know how it is. Priorities change, she’s got a career, now I’m designing that dream wedding for her.”

“And I’m sure you’ll do well. Your trick with the Plaza? That was nice.” She tries to keep up her smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes anymore. “Hopefully it’s enough to get Rachel excited again–”

“Laura?”

Mike calls to her from across the atrium. When she looks back and waves, he starts walking, almost _tip-toeing_ towards them. Harvey can smell the fear.

“We were just discussing your future plans,” Laura informs Mike. Harvey expects her to extend a hand for him to kiss, but no, she gets up and hugs Mike close.

They get down to business. Harvey pulls out his revised color options, white and plum with touches of lavender, and he can tell Mike really likes them this time.

Laura surveys them with narrowed eyes. “But where’s the brown?”

“The brown?” Harvey frowns.

“For the cocoa.”

“The cocoa?”

“For the Nutcracker theme. Like Rachel wanted she was little, since the first time we took her to the ballet.”

This wedding has officially spun out of control. Harvey’s about to explain politely but firmly that there is no ballet theme, he has not heard anything about a ballet theme, and if Rachel would like a ballet theme she will have to contact Harvey herself and inform him at her earliest convenience–

“Right,” Mike says, “the Nutcracker theme. We’re still figuring out exactly to interpret it, but cocoa would be a nice touch. In honor of the Arab dancers in Act 2.”

Harvey turns to scowl at him, but Mike stares back with a look of pure pleading.

Nutcracker wedding it is.

“We had the white because of all the white costumes in ballet,” Harvey says, improvising at top speed, improbably thankful for that time Louis Litt spent an hour-long cake tasting ranking all of the Bolshoi’s star danseurs since the 1800s. “And the plum’s from the Sugar Plum Queen.”

“Fairy,” Mike interjects.

“Right. Fairy.”

“I assume you’ve already booked the dancers for the reception,” Laura says.

“We’re still looking. Harvey brought me a selection of options last time, and I just didn’t think anyone was up to Rachel’s standards.”

Harvey shoots Mike a grateful look.

They somehow hobble through the rest of the meeting. Mike saves Harvey with clever ballet allusions, and a new vision of the wedding emerges in Harvey’s mind, with Rachel in an even puffier white dress than previously imagined, with a tasteful excerpt from Tchaikovsky playing as she walks down the aisle. He can make it work.

He cuts them off and gets out as soon as their meeting block’s over. He’s got a good excuse too; his next clients are Louis and Sheila, and if he doesn’t show up exactly on time he might walk in on their afternoon baby-making session again.

Their apartment’s downtown too, and so he can justify circling back to the coffee shop afterwards.

“So,” he says, non-judgmentally as he can, “you like ballet.”

Mike doesn’t reply at first; he’s oddly interested in the pump of the vanilla syrup bottle. When he hands Harvey his completed drink, he mumbles, “Actually, I can’t stand it.”

 _Goddammit_.

The whole story comes spilling out. Yes, Mike admits, Rachel mentioned how she wanted a Nutcracker wedding, to coax him to some different weird contemporary dance show back when they had just started dating. No, he didn’t remember that comment, or rather he did but he didn’t think it was important, but god, Harvey, it’s a perfect wedding theme, just please add cocoa in, it’s perfect for her.

When desperation creeps into his spiel, Harvey gives up. “All right, what’s really going on here?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“We’ve already established you’re no good at lying to me.”

Mike glances around the shop, checking that it’s otherwise empty, and then collapses, forearms dropping onto the counter. “It’s complicated.”

“I figured.”

“Just, Harvey, I– I’m not good enough for her.” He cranes his neck up, all wide blue eyes and scruffy hair, and Harvey wants to kiss that thought out of his head.

Instead, he asks, “Is this about law school?”

Mike lets out a groan and pushes himself back up, rocking back against the wall. “I’d get in. Columbia, Harvard, I’d get in. I have the grades, god knows I have the LSAT, and Rachel’s dad would probably make a call behind my back.”

“But?”

“It’s crazy.”

“Tell me.”

It’s not an order, which is why Mike does it.

“So New York’s got this weird exception. Reading the law.”

Harvey doesn’t know what that means, but he nods encouragingly.

“So technically,” Mike continues, his voice growing stronger, “if you can pass the bar exam and you can get an established lawyer to apprentice you, you don’t need law school to get a New York law license. No three years of mock trials and showing off your fancy summer associate jobs and just . . . fighting battles that don’t help anyone, in the broad scheme of things.”

Harvey goes for the obvious question. “Why don’t you read the law?”

Mike folds his arms and looks out the window. Harvey can pinpoint the moment when his eyes dim. “Because you’d have to be out of your mind to hire a fake lawyer like that.”

“You’re great, though. _Someone_ would have to hire you–”

“Some broke legal clinic, maybe,” Mike admits with a shrug. “No one with money to afford better. Harvey, I want to end up somewhere with resources for the big cases, a big corporate firm that also likes pro bono, and Rachel deserves that. She deserves someone with the fancy title . . . and the financial stability to go with it.”

“That’s a bad position to be in.”

“I’ll get over it.” Mike snaps out of his musing with a shake of the head. “And in the meantime, the Nutcracker theme would make her really happy.”

Right, the wedding.

“And,” Mike adds, “it’d be great if we could say I came up with it, and we were just keeping it a surprise.”

A wedding with some light fraud on top.

“I’ll find some mediocre dancers for you to have rejected,” Harvey replies, picking up his coffee and pasting on a smile. “And I’ll add brown into your colors today.”

* * *

The next day he calls up Rachel as a last resort and tells her about the “surprise” Nutcracker twist, hoping that she’ll cringe.

“Oh,” she instead coos. “That’s so thoughtful of Mike, I love it! He’s always remembering things like that.”

Harvey surrenders on that front. “On another note, I’ve got the wedding insurance policy drawn up. Covers injuries, gifts, outfits, etc. If you end up postponing or cancelling due to a blizzard or some family disaster, they’ll cover the expenses.”

“Great, can you send them over?”

“Will do. Being a lawyer I’m sure you’d notice it anyway, but I should point out it doesn’t cover cold feet cases.”

“I– I didn’t even consider that.”

Harvey laughs. “Oh, of course not, it’s just a standard disclaimer.”

“Oh, right, got it.” She chuckles, high and thin, and excuses herself back to work.

* * *

“She bought it,” Mike says, hurrying up to him before the next meeting.

“We kept our nuts uncracked,” Harvey says without the slightest smile.

But Mike has to force down a grin even as he greets Laura, Rachel’s appointed representative for the day. Rachel texted Harvey about the switch last night, while he was studying the _Paraphrase on Tchaikovsky’s Flower Waltz_ in excruciating detail.

“So, Harvey–” Laura starts speaking before he can, bubbling over with enthusiasm that at once sets him on edge– “to make the process easier for you I went ahead and reserved your reception entertainment.”

Harvey has had years of experience dealing with mothers of the bride. Going by historical data, this particular step isn’t even that egregious. It’s thoughtful, well-meaning and most likely easy to reverse, which is why Harvey doesn’t immediately snap.

“You did _what_?” snaps Mike.

To be fair he’s more astonished than rude, but Laura’s smile still wavers. “I found the idea scribbled in Rachel’s old scrapbooks. It’s a wonderful plan, I know she’ll be so excited.”

“And what exactly did Rachel plan so long ago?” Harvey says, his own smile sealed in place.

“A string quartet!”

“No.”

Harvey looks curiously at Mike, because that’s the most spirit he’s ever shown outside their coffee shop banter.

“Look,” Mike expounds, “I don’t doubt that Rachel wanted a string quartet, but some plans change. She hasn’t told me a single thing about stringed instruments since the day we met, and personally I want a DJ. I want to be able to dance at my reception.”

“Oh no,” Laura retorts, seemingly shocked, “of course you can dance. I made sure the quartet’s repertoire contains a wide variety of traditional dance music. Minuets, waltzes, even some _swing_!”

Mike gives Harvey a look.

“Let’s hang on a minute here,” he says, stepping in as smoothly as he can, “and look at our options. If you could give me the quartet’s name, I’ll do my due diligence, make sure they’ve got enough wedding experience to be worthy of Mike and Rachel–”

“Here it is–” she fishes a business card out of her purse and hands it over to Harvey– “but truth be told, I don’t actually care about this group.”

“You don’t,” he intones.

“No,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Why would I?”

“Then why–” Mike starts to ask, now turning exasperated.

“Because,” Harvey interrupts, suddenly alighting on the answer, “you’re just trying to get Rachel excited about this.”

He wonders what the hell’s going on behind closed doors.

Laura pulls out her phone. “Let me call Rachel down, just in case she’s available.”

“I thought she was in a meeting,” Mike says with a frown.

“With her briefs, but that’s always flexible if you push,” Laura replies with a sly smile.

Rachel dashes down the escalator five minutes later. “Hey, so sorry I’m late, we’re all overwhelmed today with this new expedited trial . . .”

“So the topic in question,” Mike says as she pulls up another chair, inserting herself between him and Harvey, “is the music. Laura would like a string quartet, while I want something that feels like it’s from this century.”

Rachel winces. “Well . . .”

Mike’s face falls, and Harvey's lost the battle right there.

“You want the string quartet?” he says with a grin, and Rachel nods right back. “Great choice. It’s elegant, traditional, I like it myself.”

It’s a harmless white lie, right up until Mike’s look of betrayal stabs him in the heart.

“The one potential issue you run into with a string quartet,” he continues regardless, “is that you have to ban any really predictable music. It’s a fine line between traditional and passe.”

“What kind of music?” Rachel asks, cautiously.

“Off the top of my head, that Boccherini song, I’ve heard it at twenty weddings where I remember nothing else. Pachelbel’s Canon, no matter how tempted you are. And, given your dates–” he steels his voice with all the authority he can muster– “not a single Christmas carol.”

* * *

He gets his next coffee free.

“Seriously? Even though I get paid like a banker, consultant or lawyer?”

“Yeah, well, I’m piloting a new thank-you program for loyal customers.”

Harvey raises his latte. “I’ll drink to that.”

“Are you here for business or pleasure?” Mike says with a minxish smile Harvey wishes he meant.

“My business,” he says, dropping his voice low to match, “your pleasure.”

Mike leans in, eyebrow quirked. “Is that so?”

“I’m looking into string quartets with a more . . . modern style,” Harvey tells him. “So I need to get a read on your music tastes.”

“Cool.”

“So who are some of your favorite artists?” Harvey waits a second before adding, “Jonas Brothers? ‘N Sync?”

Mike melts into chuckles, and he keeps right on going. “Let me guess, Selena Gomez. Do you have Bieber Fever?”

“I’m just surprised someone your age knows who those are.”

“You calling me old?”

“Your idea of good music is probably, I don’t know, The Spinners.”

“They were one of the defining pop bands of their generation!”

“Keep telling yourself that, old man,” Mike retorts, wiping away tears of laughter. “But honestly, Harvey? Thanks for standing up for me against the carols.”

Against his will Harvey’s smirk softens. “Someone has to.”

* * *

“For god’s sake, I’m never going to marry someone as pretentious, self-centered, and oblivious as you!”

Harvey ducks as Sheila throws something– a banana, he’s not gonna ask– at her dearly beloved fiance and stalks out of his office. Louis promptly bursts into tears.

Harvey represses a sigh and pulls out the tissue box he hides under his table for occasions like these.

“I gave up the huppah,” Louis sobs. “I let her have dairy in the wedding cake even though I’m lactose intolerant. But now she wants to drop _Music of the Night_ from the program? How can we move forward?”

“Louis, she’s not dropping it. She just doesn’t want it for her procession down the aisle, and to be fair–”

“I’m not paying you to be fair, I’m paying you to give us the perfect wedding!”

“And you’re sure,” Harvey deadpans, “that the perfect wedding should imply that you’re a twisted creature of darkness abducting an innocent victim of stalking to your lair?”

“No,” Louis snaps, “she’s the Phantom, I’m Christine, keep up!”

Harvey stares at him. Fortunately Gretchen knocks on the door before he has to answer.

“Rachel Zane’s downstairs. She says she has to see you.”

According to firm policy, Harvey shouldn’t indulge clients in surprise appointments this far before a wedding; it sets bad precedent.

“Maybe,” Louis gasps into his Kleenex, “maybe she’ll come back if I settle for the Bocelli version?”

“I’m sorry, Louis, but my other client’s here for an emergency, and I have to–”

“Go,” Louis says with a dramatic toss of the head, “you can leave too.”

Harvey gives Gretchen a look, and she nods. As she sits down beside Louis to console him and then drag him from the office, he escapes.

By comparison, Mike and Rachel are dream clients.

Rachel’s down in the building lobby, and she thanks him profusely for meeting her on such short notice. “It’s just come to my attention that I’ve been slacking on the wedding planning.”

Harvey takes a seat by her. “Rachel, I’ll admit it’s traditional for the bride to be more involved than the groom. But if you want to throw those roles out the window, do it, leave the fussing to the guys–”

“No,” she says with a smile that looks more like a wince, “that’s not the issue. I _adore_ wedding planning. When I was a kid, I wanted to do it full-time.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer. Or Joe DiMaggio, either would do.”

She gives a nervous laugh. “I’m just not as excited about the whole process as I thought I'd be.”

“If you have ways for me to help, I’m all ears.”

“First off, do you have a good honeymoon travel agent?”

“I have a guy for everything,” he assures her. “Where are you going?”

“San Diego or Iceland!”

“. . . What?”

“Mike and I haven’t quite decided yet, but those are the final possibilities.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, which of you’s which?”

“He wants San Diego. He came up with it in two seconds, but _I’ve_ been wanting to go back to Iceland since I went when I was ten, but now he’s being stubborn, so . . .” She lets out a long sigh. “We’ll see who wins.”

“I know guys who can help with either outcome,” Harvey says. “What else?”

“I–” she falters for a moment. “I don’t have anything else in particular. But my mother keeps asking about the wedding, about me and Mike . . .”

“Have you considered couples counseling?”

She freezes, and Harvey does too. He can’t believe he just asked that.

“It can be useful to any couple,” he expands, making sure to sound casual, off-the-cuff. “A chance to make sure you’ve had the big conversations–”

“No,” Rachel cuts him off, kind but firm. “No, we don’t need it. Mike and I, we've been _propelled_ together since the minute we met. It's a legal fairy tale, we’re going to be the king and queen of corporate law ten years out. Trust me, we’ve had every conversation we need.”

“I believe you,” Harvey lies smoothly. “But if you want to go just to set your mom at ease, I know a guy in everything–”

“I appreciate that, it’s just–” she gives a nonchalant shrug– “not necessary. Any and all issues are coming from the wedding, not from me and Mike.”

“And . . . what issues do you see with the wedding?”

“Do you see,” he says, not “are there.” He won’t admit that he’s made a mistake; it’s a lawyer’s move.

“The color scheme, mainly.”

“We could take the brown out, it is a little cluttered–”

“And could we also skip the dark purple?” she says with an apologetic smile. “I appreciate how you and Mike were going for the Nutcracker theme there, but now that I’m thinking about it I really do just want lavender and cream. If we could just . . . stick to the plan.”

Harvey compares this request to ten others he’s received from Sheila and Louis. It’s more reasonable than the Journal debacle, or even the Phantom-themed procession. He’s paid to handle curveballs like this. Still . . .

“Mike’s okay with this?”

“He told me so,” she chirps.

It’s a lawyer’s move.

“I’ll make the change.”

* * *

Harvey prints the Zane-Ross wedding invitations, cream with curling plum calligraphy; he can rationalize it, since lavender’s too damn light to read. He seals and sends them himself.

* * *

“She’s not coming. Cady told her she might make partner early if she commits more to her work, so . . . now I don’t see her,” Mike explains. “Trust me, she would have wanted to be here for _this_.”

The cake tasting. Harvey ushers Mike into a consultation with his most favorite pastry chef; normally she’s too busy with her nitrogen gelato lab truck to design wedding cakes, but Harvey persuaded her to make an exception.

“Vanilla, Harvey? It’s literally vanilla.”

This is Mike’s comment on the first sample; he says it with his mouth full of cake and buttercream frosting. Harvey rolls his eyes.

“It’s the best vanilla cake in the city,” Harvey challenges. “Maybe you should outgrow your stereotypes.”

“Did you know vanilla flowers only open for one day? They’re not exactly a symbol of lasting love.”

Harvey swallows down a remark about how that’s perfect for this wedding and takes another bite of cake.

“And now–” the chef returns from her kitchen with two new slices of cake, topped with fluffy frosting– “we have lemon.”

Harvey digs in and finds it light and moist, though the taste isn’t quite to _his_ taste. Still, he keeps his face clear of expression as Mike decides . . .

Mike screws up his forehead. “It’s great, it’s just not right for me.”

The chef inquires why not.

“It’s too sweet for me,” he answers after a moment of thought. “I know a lot of people love that, I think Rachel would love it, but I don’t like how the sugar masks all the real flavor.”

Harvey chimes in: “Same here, unfortunately.”

“Ah, not to worry, I have one more experiment in the works.” She scurries back into the kitchen and returns with two pieces of coffee-flavored cake, draped in white fondant.

Harvey and Mike take their first bites, and their eyes meet.

“This one.”

“Definitely.”

“Wonderful,” she says, clapping her hands. “It’s an extremely simple cake, as my creations go, only a couple thousand dollars to match the bride’s design plan–”

“Hang on,” Mike interrupts. “I don’t know how to say this, but . . . Rachel’s not going to go for a simple cake. It’s her wedding, she’ll need something to brag about, and plain coffee cake isn’t really _good_ enough.”

“Special enough,” Harvey amends, because “good”’s got nothing to do with it.

The chef looks to him in dismay. “But it tastes _fabulous_ , we all agree on that!”

“I know,” Harvey murmurs. “It’s the best cake I’ve ever had.”

They sit around the table, staring forlornly at the offending cake.

“Brand names,” Harvey abruptly says. “We can dress it up with a brand name.”

“What do you mean,” she clucks, “a brand name . . .”

“No Starbucks beans,” Mike says, “when we could spend 160 dollars per pound on Kopi Luwak.”

Harvey blinks. “Kopi what?”

“Um, don’t look into it too carefully,” he dismisses with a wave of his hand. “Just appreciate the pretentiousness. I think Rachel will.”

It’s another layer of misdirection, near-deception, but fraud’s starting to feel natural.

* * *

They make their arrangements quickly, since Rachel’s drafted a blueprint for the entire outside of the cake. Harvey still has twenty spare minutes when they leave.

“While we’re in the area,” Harvey remarks, “there’s another bit of business we could take care of, unless you’re too busy–”

“No,” Mike jumps in. “I’m not.”

A grin spreads across Harvey’s face.

He leads Mike down a few blocks, onto a side street, up to a little store. Its window is cluttered with colorful plastic statuettes, primarily–

“Action figures?” Mike gapes. “I take back the old man comment, you’re actually twelve–”

Harvey smirks but doesn’t reply, just holding the door open for Mike.

“We’re not here for _action figures_ ,” he corrects once they’re inside. “If you want a doll of yourself in Spandex, make a different appointment.”

“So what are we here for?”

Harvey gestures at a center table, draped in white with tiers of wedding cake toppers, and Mike’s jaw drops.

There are hundreds of couples. All different races and sizes, some in wheelchairs, some in red saris, some lying on picnic blankets, some driving off in surprisingly accurate white race cars. Couples reading together, dancing together, playing the piano together. There’s one of a bride and groom drinking coffee that Harvey emphatically doesn’t stare at.

“So make your choice,” Harvey says. “Pick some poses, come up with a fun activity if you want. I’ll go get you the friends-and-family discount.”

He strolls over and starts negotiating with the owner Joy, who puts up a token fight and then capitulates in five minutes flat, like the last ten times Harvey’s walked into her shop.

“All right,” Joy grumbles, “let’s see what this groom of yours picked, and if it’s complicated I will not hesitate to bump the price back up . . .”

Mike’s picked out two statuettes already, a plain one of a bride and groom facing each other with joined hands, and another one where the groom’s holding the bride in place as she twirls en pointe. Startled by their return, he drops the third cake topper he was holding on the floor– Harvey is torn between rolling his eyes and laughing– puts it back onto the display at a wrong angle, and then starts explaining his two choices. Harvey informs him that the ballet figurine is twice the price, thanks to the intricate ruffles on the tulle skirt, and Mike happily chooses the other one.

Then he emails Joy some pictures of himself and Rachel and signs the order.

Harvey looks at the cake topper Mike dropped and finds it’s of two grooms of equal heights, one blond and one brunette.

* * *

“She’s not coming today.”

“Work again?”

Harvey’s meeting Mike to visit a florist– not one he knows himself, but a particularly expensive “greenery designer” Laura requested– and Rachel’s again absent, though this time without notice.

“Not exactly,” Mike says with a grimace. “I told her I wanted to maybe read the law, try a goal other than becoming partner at a big firm in eight years, and she . . . said it was a waste of my mind. Which is true.”

It might be true, but Harvey can’t stand it. Mike doesn’t just look like a kicked puppy anymore, he’s a puppy kicked and abandoned in freezing rain. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” he replies with a blase shrug. “We went to a marriage counselor, he saw we were fighting, he said it’s great that we fight and sent us home in five minutes.”

“He said . . . it’s great that you’re fighting.”

“Yeah, it’s a sign of openness and honesty.”

“Huh.”

Harvey’s really never understood the whole romance thing.

“Anyway, she trusts you to get the flowers right.” Mike shrugs. “Shall we?”

* * *

It wasn’t on their website. Harvey checked.

The policy wasn’t on their website with its ten different font sizes and its single-page 500-picture photo gallery, but it’s printed neatly on a sign in their lobby: “For wedding consultations, both members of the happy couple must be present.”

Harvey strides up, fully prepared to intimidate them into submission: “Hey, I’m here for the Zane-Ross wedding, and I–”

“We’re sorry we’re not early,” Mike breaks in from behind Harvey. He steps up to the table with a winsome smile. “I’m Ray Zane. Not Rachel today, obviously.”

He turns to Harvey expectantly.

“. . . And I’m Mike Ross.”

Once they check in, a consultant named Helena beckons them upstairs into the main studio. Mike walks a little closer to Harvey than usual. After fifteen seconds of intense strategizing, Harvey lays a hand on the small of Mike’s back.

“Rachel Zane?”

“I could totally be a Rachel,” Mike gloats. “Soft features.”

The consultant leads them into a long room with hollowed alcoves on either side, each dressed in a different floral theme. “To start off, we’ve our avant-garde Cibum collection.”

Harvey and Mike stare at a Corinthian pillar dressed entirely in food: almonds on the branch, bunches of cranberries, whole lemons arranged in pairs.

“We choose our greenery based both on the literal tastes of the bride and groom and for their symbolic meaning as flowers.”

“What do you mean, their symbolism?” Harvey frowns at an obscenely split pomegranate at the center. “I can guess on some of it, but do they all mean something?”

“Well, for example–” Helena reaches into an icebox, a genuine wooden vintage icebox, and pulls out a silver tray of fruit– “you might consider these options.”

She hands it to Mike. “On the left, we have cherries, which have historically been associated with an elite education. We pulled that just for you, Mx. Zane, in honor of your Columbia law degree.”

“. . . Thank you.” Mike pops the cherries in his mouth and chews, looking vaguely nauseous.

“Moving right along, we have a more unconventional choice. Some pineapple, which bears the message, ‘you are without flaws.’”

Mike picks up a flower-shaped slice of pineapple and turns to Harvey. “It’ll be good for you. Come on, I love you, Harvey–”

He says it in a high-pitched sing-songy voice, and Harvey knows it’s all part of the couple act, and still his head feels light as Mike pops the fruit between his lips.

The taste is spectacular.

“The next one that might appeal to you, though please correct me if I’m making assumptions that I shouldn’t, is our Superbia collection. We’ve got plenty of green carnations, a historical symbol of gay men linked specifically to Oscar Wilde, as well as tall sunflowers for pride and orchids for masculinity.”

Harvey does a double take. “How are orchids masculine? Aren’t they ridiculously fragile?”

“Some would say that’s why they’re masculine,” Mike whispers, eliciting a snort from him.

“Actually,” Helena says apologetically, “they’re a sign of a man’s testicles.”

“I’ll have bigger orchids than him,” Mike immediately retorts, and that’s it, Harvey bursts out laughing and slips his whole arm around Mike, pulling him a bit closer.

“As you’d like,” Helena beams, even as Harvey shakes his head.

“No, we have to look at a couple more options,” he sighs. “Though that is _amazing_.”

Helena takes them through the other collections, and Mike keeps up a running string of sexual innuendos, and dammit, Harvey joins in. He can’t help himself.

It’s all just a show.

Mike eventually lands on the Forma collection, a mix of white and blush and purple that works beautifully with the wedding colors. Harvey would object; though it’s perfect for Rachel, it’s missing any sense of Mike, any edge or soul or wit–

“But let’s add in some light purple orchids,” Mike says.

“Good boy.”

It slips out, and Harvey can feel the jolt of electricity down Mike’s spine.

Mike signs for this order, forging Rachel’s signature with surprising accuracy, and then Helena offers Harvey her business card so they can contact her with any questions. Mike reaches for it, and Harvey holds it up and then flicks it away just in time twice before relenting on his third try with a broad grin.

“Goodness, you’re cute,” Helena coos. “You really adore each other, don’t you?”

Mike still hasn’t taken the card, his fingers lingering a half-inch from Harvey’s, and Harvey can’t look away from Mike’s eyes.

“Yes,” Harvey breathes.

Then he leans forward and kisses his cheek, tenderly, just a half-inch from the corner of Mike’s lips.

Mike breathes in fast and looks away.

“Yeah.” He directs his attention back to Helena, subtly shrugging off Harvey’s arm. “I’m really in love. But I was wondering, Helena, for the wedding party bouquets could we also get a little bit of lavender . . .”

* * *

“Harvey, you _were_ just acting in there, right?”

“Of course.”

“. . . Good.”

Mike says it sharply, then turns on his heel and marches away from the flower shop. Harvey’s too stunned to follow.

* * *

It’s the day of the wedding.

Today Sheila and Louis walk down the aisle, and Harvey doesn’t want to guess how many bananas were harmed in the process of their reconciliation. He’s thrown his full focus into this wedding, complying with the hundred new requests the “happy” couple throw his way every hour. It’s a convenient justification for why he hasn’t spoken to either Rachel or Mike in weeks.

Sheila takes her place at the back of the aisle. She’s bulging out of a poorly tailored white corset– Harvey elected to stay quiet about it, that way she wouldn’t go back to the black leather version– but fit aside, she’s the model of a glowing bride. Harvey gives a quiet signal, and she starts to walk as strains of Andrew Lloyd Webber fill the air.

At the front of the hall, Louis raises a mic and starts to sing “Music of the Night.”

He rasps his way through the start of the song, and it’s a decent Crawford impression, but Harvey still can’t believe he agreed to this. Moreover, he can’t believe _Sheila_ agreed to it, not after storming out over this exact song. He can’t understand how two supposedly intelligent lawyers looked at such a volatile relationship and decided, “yes, _this_ is the battle I want to spend the rest of my life fighting.” He doesn’t understand true love.

That’s a lie.

The truth is Harvey understands true love perfectly. He understands perfectly how two objectively mismatched people can trick themselves into “falling in love,” out of fear of falling behind their friends and dying alone, because society’s shoved too many rom-coms in front of them. The truth is love is just a peculiarly popular form of fraud, a series of increasingly complex and fragile deceptions like spinning a cake flavor or lying to a flower shop–

As Louis croons each line, he gazes at Sheila like he’ll never be happy without her.

If Harvey had to gamble on it, he’d bet Louis and Sheila will last, not just because they’d have the divorce from hell. They’ve done an extraordinary job of deluding themselves, and if two people believe strongly enough in their love story, they might just get one.

Mike and Rachel might live happily ever after, if only out of sheer bullheadedness.

Sucking in a massive breath, Louis hurls out a high phrase: “ _Close your eyes for your eyes will only tell the truth, and the truth isn't what you want to see . . ._ ”

* * *

Thanksgiving hasn’t even happened when the first carol attacks Harvey: “ _It’s the most wonderful time of the year_!”

Already a scarce resource, Harvey’s goodwill towards man abruptly drains from his body.

* * *

Though it’s 6pm, Harvey takes another long sip of his espresso, struggling to make it through his task without yawning. He’s giving feedback on the Zane-Ross vows.

He had hoped that they’d opt for something traditional, “to love and to cherish," but something possessed them to write original vows. Harvey then hoped they’d come up with something clever and winning, two aspiring lawyers and all that, but no such luck.

“From the first second I met you,” Mike will say, “I knew I wanted to be here with you someday, walking down the aisle arm in arm.”

Harvey’s initial instinct is to upbraid Mike for bad judgment, _no one_ should decide to get married at first glance. He settles for crossing out the last phrase, since they already decided Mike and Rachel _wouldn’t_ walk down the aisle arm in arm. Rachel will walk with her father, while Mike awaits her at the altar.

That’s a logistical fact that Mike should have remembered, and Harvey wonders if Rachel wrote his part.

“I know that I fought it at first–” oh, that’s flattering, Harvey’s offended on Mike’s behalf even while he’s irritated by his own hypocrisy– “but now, Mike, I can't imagine living alongside anyone else for the rest of my life.”

It’s an unobjectionable statement. He resists the urge to critique her lack of imagination.

“If I've learned one thing, it's that we never know what the future holds, and that could be a scary thing. But I know that there is nothing that I can't handle when I have you by my side.”

Now that _has_ to be Rachel, Rachel’s valiant attempt at putting herself in Mike’s shoes, because Harvey can’t imagine Mike saying something so obviously and optimistically false. Mike _knows_ there are tragedies too large to handle, dead parents, dead kids. Tragedies you can survive, sure, but “handle” is really pushing it.

Then there’s an unintelligible line about family that’s only half-finished; Harvey decides to ignore it. Rachel finishes with, “You are the strongest man I've ever met. And you make me stronger. You're the husband I've always wanted.”

That last sentence might actually be the most honest sentiment here, but Harvey crumples the paper with unnecessary force and flees to Donna’s office.

She takes one look at his face and asks, “Who do I have to kill?”

He snorts and collapses into a chair. “No one at the moment. Just words on a paper.”

“Ooh, did you sign a contract you shouldn’t have?”

“No, but my clients will. I read some vows that I want to set on fire,” he corrects. “And I don’t even know how to start fixing them.”

She grimaces. “That bad, huh?”

“No.”

She lifts an eyebrow.

“It’s complicated,” he says with a wave of his hand. “But I would appreciate some general insights from the oracle of Donna.”

“Insights?”

“Explain this whole love thing to me again.”

She gives him a pout of pity, but it’s fast enough he can pretend not to notice. “All right. I assume my past Shakespeare analogies didn’t stick, so . . . Let’s talk about Samantha.”

“Sure. How did you two get together in the first place?”

“She was a bridesmaid at 27 weddings. Don’t worry–” she laughs at Harvey’s shock– “they weren’t 27 different brides. As a lawyer, she handles a decent amount of divorces, and people bring her in for second marriages, then third marriages, so on and so forth.”

“So where do you come in?”

“One time she fell for the groom.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Harvey intones.

“A terrible lapse of judgment, obviously,” she scoffs. “But I was planning that wedding, and she got dramatically wasted at the reception, and I tried to drag her out before she started a fight, and then she started trying to fight me . . . one thing led to another.”

“You started off _fighting_?”

“She’s actually a trained boxer like you, but when she’s drunk and drowning in a teal-and-gold bridesmaid dress she turns into . . . a wobbly peacock? I don’t know, it was very cute.”

“Not exactly the stuff of Hallmark,” he remarks.

“No,” Donna admits. “But then again, really perfect romances are, in my sage opinion, doomed. Whereas Samantha and I saw the worst of each other right off, so there was nowhere to go but up.”

She says it sardonically, but there’s a warm twinkle in her eye that Harvey’s only seen in the few clients he suspects of actually being in love.

“How’d you know it was love?”

“Nothing grand,” Donna says with a shrug. “I didn’t wake up one day and realize I couldn’t be happy without her. But both our jobs are stressful, and we both noticed a pattern in ourselves.”

“Yeah?”

“Neither of us could be entirely, 100% happy unless we both were.”

* * *

Harvey discards the whole set of vows and politely emails Rachel about rewriting them to be more specific, more personal. He wants drunken fights in a teal bridesmaid dress, or bickering about poor cappuccino choices.

He wants to believe there’s something _real_.

Rachel responds a few hours later with a brand new set of vows. They’re more specific to this wedding, sure, a bunch of spun-sugar poetry about the _Nutcracker_ ballet, how she and Mike are about to leave their boring real life for the world of candy in Act II. They’re fantastic and whimsical and strictly more interesting than the previous set, and Harvey should step away from the roulette wheel before he loses big.

“ _These vows are perfect_ ,” he replies.

* * *

Mike emails Harvey the final reception song list, annotated with his comments:

“All of Me”- _first dance! Rachel and her mother claim it’s the peak of romance, 2 vs. 1, etc. etc.  
_“I'll Always Love You”- _this ancient relic from The Spinners goes out to all the old men in the audience_

And so on.

Against his will, Harvey’s still beaming when a bridal boutique calls him five minutes later. It’s an urgent matter, they insist, regarding the Zane-Ross wedding.

Harvey checks the address, learns they’re just a couple blocks away from his office, and walks over, since he’s far more intimidating in person. He regularly straightens out billing issues and closes deals for his clients, as a perk of his most inclusive planning package.

“Hi, I represent Miss Zane–” the legal connotations of “represent” are a little strong, but Harvey’s happy to let them misinterpret it– “so could I see a copy of the bill?”

As soon as he sees the numbers he knows they don’t add up right; while Rachel’s certainly eager about the ballet look, there’s still no way she spent four thousand dollars on extra tulle. He politely asks to see the manager, smiles while the manager explains how this is a perfectly normal charge, and then threatens him with a lawsuit and, worse, utter ruin via the New York gossip network. Three minutes later Harvey’s knocked three thousand dollars off the price.

He really should charge more for his services.

“Thank you for fixing that,” he says with a dazzling grin. “In return, I won’t ban all my clients from your shop. Is Miss Zane still around?”

A cowering salesman leads him to Rachel’s dressing room to deliver the news. Harvey knocks on the door and asks if he can come in.

After a moment, Rachel says yes. He steps in and finds her in her wedding dress.

Its skirt is mostly air, flowing layers of gossamer and tulle, while the heart-shaped top fits beautifully, glittering with jewels. She’s tied her hair back in a ballet bun, with one ringlet carefully pulled out and a white veil flowing from under the knot, and she looks as radiant as a prima ballerina. As an angel atop a Christmas tree.

“You look unspeakably beautiful.”

She lifts her hand to her mouth, eyes filling with tears. Harvey doesn’t panic just yet because that’s not an unheard-of reaction, tears of joy upon seeing the dress you’ll wear on the happiest day of your life.

“And I worked out the price, so you won’t have to give up a layer of cake for this either.”

Now she mumbles “thank you” with an ominous sniffle.

Harvey should go, but some darker instinct pushes him to press where it hurts. “Mike’s going to be the happiest he’s ever been, seeing you in this dress.”

“I kissed another man.”

“. . . What did you just say?”

 _Now_ Harvey panics.

“It was a while back,” she gasps, the whole story spilling out, “I ended up with my ex as my client, and I swear I tried to switch off his case, but Cady said I couldn’t keep letting my personal life affect my work. And I couldn’t avoid him, and Mike was fighting me on some stupid law school thing, and I just . . .”

She trails off, and Harvey fills in the rest. “Cheated. On Mike.”

This is no less than the ninth time Harvey’s discovered a cheating scandal ahead of a wedding. When it’s mutual he’s ignored it, inferring a possible open arrangement. A couple times he’s suggested counseling, though that’s already been a bust for Rachel. Mostly he’s gritted his teeth and kept his mouth shut; he’s done his job and fantasized about switching careers.

One time he told a man that his wife was cheating on him. Never again.

When Harvey speaks again, his voice is murderously soft. “It was a one-time thing, wasn’t it?”

She nods quickly.

“And it’s going to stay that way, right?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And if it doesn’t, you understand I will testify for Mike at your divorce hearings, right?”

She looks at him in horror, and he gives her a small, milquetoast smile. After a second she breaks away with a shaky sigh. “None of this feels the way I thought it would.”

“Is there any way that I can help with that?” he says, forcibly restraining the sarcasm.

Her eyelids flutter closed. “Yes, but you probably can’t pull it off.”

“Try me.”

“When I was little, I did want the Nutcracker theme, but I wanted it to be pure Christmas.”

“And what,” Harvey says, his voice hard and flat, “does pure Christmas look like?”

“Red and green.” She turns to look at him, tears glittering on her eyelashes. “If the wedding just looks the way I wanted, I _know_ it’ll all fall into place.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

And so he accepts a newly refined mission: making Rachel's Christmas dream come true. He has to capture the whole Christmas spirit in this wedding, all the extravagant optimism and unconditional love that he’s never himself understood. He has to pull _Rachel_ into the Christmas spirit and sell her on her own damn holiday love story, or else–

He’s heard “All of Me” at least seventy times, which is why all the words have blended into mush in his head. He pulls it up, just to refresh his memory, and if the words are too painfully generic he’ll direct the vocalist to step out and leave it to the quartet:

 _What would I do without your smart mouth_  
_Drawing me in, and you kicking me out_  
_Got my head spinning, no kidding, I can’t pin you down_  
_What’s going on in that beautiful mind_  
_I’m on your magical mystery ride_  
_And I’m so dizzy, don’t know what hit me, but I’ll be alright_

Mike.

Harvey’s heard this song seventy times and never managed to remember it, but now the words brand themselves on his soul, for there is no doubt that this song is about Mike. About him, thinking about Mike.

 _'Cause all of me_  
_Loves all of you_  
_Love your curves and all your edges_  
_All your perfect imperfections_  
_Give your all to me_  
_I’ll give my all to you_

He closes his eyes and imagines Rachel and Mike dancing to these lines, Rachel smiling up at him during these particular lines without any hint of irony. It’s enough to make Harvey consider switching careers to something more pleasant, like undertaking.

* * *

The day after Thanksgiving, the whole city descends into madness.

Overnight all the stores switch their music to the same canned carol list. Every sex store starts displaying Santa lingerie or bizarrely hot garland bondage; the coffee shop by Harvey's office smells oppressively of cinnamon. On every street corner clanging "musicians" collect for charity– though Harvey shudders to give the Salvation Army that name– and when he visits the mall one time to show Rachel the new color scheme, he runs into a honest-to-god _lighting ceremony_ for the palm trees’ Christmas lights.

He hates it all.

He manages to talk Rachel into keeping the cream and using deep green and burgundy as minor accent colors, in place of lavender. He justifies it to her as a cost-saving mechanism, a way to keep all their vendors from strangling them. He justifies it to himself as a matter of good taste, to keep Rachel from selecting tomato red felt for the altar or ugly snowflake sweaters for the bridesmaids or, god forbid, plaid.

He knows he’s doing it all for Mike, to save Mike from being entirely suffocated by Christmas.

He stops outside Mike’s shop. Even though it’s 6pm and he’s wired from sheer holiday rage, he’s craving an extra-hot, extra-wet cappuccino with two shots of vanilla. He could walk in right now and order it, gussy it up with a demand for Kopi Luwak, and make Mike burst out laughing.

Of course, there’s a 40% chance he’ll slip up and, instead of asking for proper layers, inform the barista his fiancee’s cheated on him. And there’s a 60% chance he won’t say a damn thing, and he’ll keep his layers, his layers upon layers of deception so thick he can’t remember how to breathe.

He skips the cappuccino.

* * *

Harvey’s lost in a Christmas tree lot, thanks to Laura’s last-minute request for well-matched Serbian spruce trees to arrange around the Terrace Room in accordance with a sketch she just found from when Rachel was in second grade. Though he’d normally have one of his subordinates obtain the trees, they’re all tied up at an even more miserable outdoor wedding that Katrina’s running– she’s just been promoted to senior planner and really, Harvey needs to speak with her about taking her “Ice Queen” nickname too literally. So now he’s personally wandering up and down the aisles, surrounded by Christmas trees as far as he can see, and the damn holiday season can’t get any more wretched . . .

 _I don't want a lot for Christmas_  
_There is just one thing I need_  
_And I don't care about the presents_  
_Underneath the Christmas tree_

Through tinny speakers starts the song that’s quickly overtaking “Joy To The World” as Harvey’s least favorite Christmas tune.

 _Santa Claus won't make me happy_  
_With a toy on Christmas Day_  
_I just want you for my own_  
_More than you could ever know_

He checks the label on a random tree. It’s a blue spruce, awkward and stubby, but Harvey can’t bring himself to care, not when Mariah Carey’s tap-dancing on his heart.

 _Make my wish come true_  
_All I want for Christmas . . ._

That’s it. He drops the label, picks a direction, and walks as fast as he can without entirely losing his dignity. From next year onwards, he shall spend the entire month of December unavailable to clients, out of reach on some warm St. Bart's beach.

_Is you!_

He glances down and finds there’s silver tinsel stuck to his patent leather shoes, even though he has taken pains not to go within twenty feet of tinsel all day.

_You-ou-ou, baby!_

When his phone dares to ring, he takes the call without checking and barks into his earpiece, “Harvey Specter.”

“. . . Harvey?”

“Mike.”

“If now’s a bad time, I can–”

“No, I’ve got all the time you need.”

“Um.”

“Tell me what the problem is, and I will annihilate it.” He means it, and he’s rewarded with a laugh.

“No, the problem’s already annihilated itself. See, my best man Trevor found this happy hour that had half-off egg-free extra-rum eggnog?”

“Egg-free . . . What?”

“I know, I’m not sure why he thought it was worth buying ten of them, and . . . I’m really not sure why he thought it was a good idea to then get behind the wheel with Jenny.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s fine,” Mike says quickly. “I mean, it’s not, but Jenny only hurt her leg, and Trevor got off scot-free, except for the part where he’s now in jail.”

“That’s . . . good?”

“It is, compared to the alternatives, I just . . .” He trails off.

Dammit.

“You don’t have anyone for your wedding party anymore.”

“Yeah.”

At last count there are 497 RSVPs from the Zanes’ extensive guest list, a massive crowd of celebrants who have no idea who Mike Ross is.

“Rachel offered to give me one of her bridesmaids,” Mike continues, “and they’re all wonderful, Samantha brought me to you in the first place, but for my wedding party I only want people I . . .” He stumbles for a second. “People I know better.”

“Mike, you’re in a rotten situation, so if you can come up with anyone anywhere, I’ll get them flown in. Hell, I can get Trevor out on bail if you’re still willing to have him–”

“I want you.”

The words hang in the air, and Harvey briefly stops breathing.

Then Mike starts to ramble again: “Look, I know it’s not standard, it’s probably a huge headache for you to plan this _and_ be in the wedding, and if there’s extra fees involved, more contracts we have to work out, I totally understand–”

“Mike.”

“And I get it if you can’t. I already went way too far at the flower studio, and I never apologized for pushing you into that, so if you don’t want to–”

“I do.”

“What?”

“Anything for you, Mike.”

* * *

Harvey spends far too long picking out the suit for the rehearsal dinner he’s now attending as Mike’s best man, as his friend, his family, his _everything_. He tries on and discards half a dozen designer suits, because nothing’s good enough. Finally he settles on a slimming black two-piece suit– sloped shoulders, peak lapels, black tie and a crisp white pocket square.

It’s one hell of a funeral suit.

He shows up at the restaurant early to check that everything’s in place and starts arguing with the chef over the Zanes’ special orders– “Look, if gooseberries aren’t in season you should have told me that when I called two months ago, or just imported them from the southern hemisphere like any decent restaurant”– so he ends up arriving to the party ten minutes late. Mike’s at the center of the room, craning his head to monitor the two doors, and his whole face lights up like a Christmas tree when Harvey walks in.

“Harvey, I’m thrilled you made it.”

“Of course I did,” he says, the tension melting right out of him. “Congratulations, Mike.”

Mike stammers out his thanks.

All of the sudden Rachel’s laugh fills the air, jingling like silver bells.

“She’s a lucky woman,” Harvey murmurs, “even if she’s marrying a philistine in a skinny tie.”

“Hey! What’s wrong with my tie?”

What’s wrong is that it’s just begging Harvey to reel Mike in with it and kiss him silly, to slip it off with the rest of Mike’s clothes and create some clever distraction while he subtly tears it to pieces.

“Nothing,” Harvey replies with a shrug.

Mike shoots him a glare of pure skepticism and then breaks into a smile again.

Soon Laura pulls him away to greet his guests, and thus Mike meets Rachel’s extended family– _his_ extended family. He’s surrounded by parents and cousins and aunts and uncles, all hugging him close and welcoming him to the family and wishing him a happy holiday season. Mike’s practically glowing with joy, all through dinner.

During dessert Donna shows up on Samantha’s arm, apologizing for her girlfriend’s incorrigible work schedule. Samantha corrects her immediately– “Never apologize for greatness, darling”– and everyone starts laughing all over again. Mike’s eyes are sparkling, and Harvey can’t look away.

It’s why he doesn’t notice Donna looking at him.

When the happy couple leaves, citing an overseas conference call Rachel has to take at six the next morning, the spell breaks. Harvey snaps back to real life, where there are waiters to tip and angry chefs to placate, and once he’s put out the most pressing fires he grabs hold of Donna and asks her to back him up at the wedding itself, since now he’s double-booked as both planner and best man.

“Sure, but Harvey . . .”

“Yeah?”

“You and Mike.”

Harvey stops, suddenly chilled through. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He expects her to scoff, push back on his pushback, but instead her eyes soften. “You really are a male version of Samantha, aren’t you?”

“Donna–”

“Listen,” she says, voice low and urgent. “Right now it feels like your world’s ending, right? But I promise you there’s a light at the end of this.”

He forces himself to look at her, head tipped to the side, lips slack. “Yeah?”

“December 26th, you’re going to spend several hours on your couch nursing a hot toddy and a broken heart while playing ‘Last Christmas’ on repeat.”

He snorts. “And where’s the light?”

“On New Year’s Eve, you’ll do your hair with too much gel, and you’ll put on a pretty suit and walk into any party in the city, and you’ll find fifty guys and fifty girls who all want to make out with you at midnight. That’s the light, Harvey, it’s a million other soulmates still out there, waiting for you.”

“Not soulmates.”

“What?”

“A million lovers, sure. Friends, maybe even marriage material. But–” he drains the last of his champagne– “soulmates are one in a million.”

* * *

On December 23rd, Harvey spends a solid half hour thinking about rimming.

“No, as I specified in my October 3rd email, the bride does _not_ want sugar on the rims of her martini glasses. Either you use crushed peppermint candy or I’m going to renegotiate the pricing again–”

It comes after an hour explaining wreath placement, and two hours specifying the varieties of apples Rachel will accept for her hot cider, and three hours critiquing the balance of ornaments on the four well-matched Serbian spruces he imported from a forest in Vermont. All he needs now are five gold rings and a partridge in a pear tree.

A stray image floats up, of Mike slipping a gold ring onto Rachel’s finger.

Harvey reaches for his phone. “Hey, did Trevor ever get around to hosting your bachelor party?”

“No.” Mike pauses. “He said it wasn’t worth the trouble, since I didn’t really have any other guys to invite.”

Harvey’s offended on his behalf, because surely Mike Ross deserves the whole wedding experience. As a wedding planner, Harvey’s arguably obliged to make sure he gets it, and that’s why he immediately offers to take Mike out to any restaurant in the city.

He throws that out as the flimsy pretense it is; he’s done deluding himself.

“I don’t want a late night, so how about we just stay in?”

“Whatever you want, Mike.”

* * *

Donna knows all, and that hurts and comforts Harvey in equal measure.

December 26th. That’s the light at the end of this, because by December 26th Mike will have pledged all of himself to Rachel, rendering himself forever off-limits to humanity in general and Harvey in particular. On December 26th it’ll be adultery, illegal and psychologically impossible. Harvey will return to his regularly scheduled programming of racking up improbably hot one-night stands, of pressing his ever-deepening cynicism under his unwavering megawatt smirk. Just a couple more nights, and Mike will be all bound up, tied with a bow to be unwrapped on Rachel Zane-Ross’s perfect Christmas Day.

He shows up at Mike’s door with a list of classy bars nearby in case Mike changes his mind about going out and a deck of cards in case he doesn’t. The rules are simple tonight. One, help Mike have fun. Two, don’t endanger the goddamn engagement.

He pastes on his most obnoxious smirk that’s still appropriate for a workplace setting– which is what this is– and knocks on the door.

“Come on in!” Mike throws it open the door, and Harvey sniffs, wondering whether he’s finally snapped from all this Christmas and started hallucinating . . .

“No, you’re not imagining it, I’ve been making holiday drinks,” Mike laughs. “I wanted to make a set of four Nutcracker specials for the wedding– you know, peppermint, tea, cocoa–”

“And coffee,” Harvey finishes, because against his will he is familiar with Act 2’s four “foreign delicacies.”

“Exactly, but then Rachel decided to go with the Plaza’s hot drinks instead,” he fills in, and anger swells in Harvey’s throat because he could have fixed that for Mike, “so I’m going to inflict my liquid Christmas on you.”

“Wonderful.”

Damn. His voice is dripping sarcasm, and when Mike’s eyes widen in concern they take Harvey’s newly refrozen heart and break it again along the old cracks.

“Not you,” he quickly clarifies. “Your taste in coffee is good enough that I’m finally questioning vanilla–” he rolls his eyes as Mike does a fist-pump– “but . . well.”

“Well, what?”

Though he’s made it through an entire year of planning a holly-infested wedding without a single tell, he finally finds the courage to confess. “I hate Christmas too.”

Mike’s whole face splits into a grin, the beatific delight of recognizing a fellow Grinch. “Well, you’re still going to try all the drinks.”

“For you.”

“For me.”

* * *

Rachel’s left the apartment in favor of following tradition and spending the night at her parents’, but Harvey can still feel her influence, in the garland over the lit fireplace, in the red throw pillows and other touches of Christmas greenery around the home. He feels out of place amidst the warmth– haunted by the ghost of Christmas Future, ha– until Mike sits him down in the kitchen, pours him a tall glass of eggnog that thankfully contains real eggs, and places his first hot cup in front of him.

“So here we have hot peppermint white chocolate.”

Harvey looks down with skepticism at the white foam, topped by little red-and-white curlicues, but he takes a sip and prepares to suppress a grimace–

It’s strikingly non-terrible.

Sipping his own drink, Mike grins. “So that right there is the fifth iteration. The trick is to use real mint leaves and cut the extra sugar, so it’s not too cloying.”

“I’m impressed you got me to like anything related to a candy cane.”

He chugs the rest of his cup with surprising gusto, and Mike snorts. “Now, it’s going to be awkward when my real best man shows up.”

Harvey pauses and lowers the cup, discreetly licking off his foam mustache. “Your real best man?”

Now Mike pauses, halfway through pouring his own cup. “No, I was joking.”

“If you want, I can go try and pull some strings for Trevor, I know a guy at the SEC–”

“I appreciate the thought,” he interrupts, “but jailbreaks are unnecessary. You’re my best man.”

“Just checking,” Harvey says mildly, as if the words haven’t warmed him through better than the peppermint.

Mike’s eyes linger on him for a moment, but when Harvey meets them he turns away and puts the kettle on for the next drink.

“Why’d you become a wedding planner?” he asks conversationally.

“Why not?”

Mike glances back at him. “Because you could have been a banker, lawyer or consultant?”

Harvey smiles at the reference. “I became a wedding planner out of spite.”

“What, you did it on a dare?”

“Hey, I got you the Plaza on a dare, don’t underestimate me.”

“Fine,” Mike relents. “But did you seriously pick a career on a dare?”

Harvey hasn’t told anyone this story, not since Donna wheedled it out of him with a devious plot in the form of a 1951 bottle of Macallan. “My dad was a saxophone player.”

“Anything I’d know?”

“Probably,” he says, voice quieting with pride. “He sat in with everybody because everybody loved him. He believed in love at first sight. Unfortunately, his first sight was a groupie.”

“Your mother?”

Harvey pours himself another glass of eggnog, right to the brim.

“I was sixteen when I caught her cheating. And I kept my mouth shut for two years, while she kept right on making him a fool.”

Mike’s watching him carefully. “Where’s the spite come in?”

“I’m twenty-one when they get divorced. Twenty-two when she and her other guy get engaged. And I’m out of college, no career to speak of, and even though she never really apologizes she thinks I’ve gotten over it all.”

“Okay . . .”

Harvey gives a grim laugh. “So she lets me plan the wedding.”

“What did you do?” Mike says, already accusatory.

“I did everything she said to,” he replies, the model of perfect innocence. “I got the right church, I blackmailed the caterers into giving us half-off by fabricating a health violation, half of Boston came to the ceremony and they all cried tears of joy. Plus the whole day ran on-time, which, looking back, was my biggest achievement.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It was perfect. So my mom gets to the reception. I have the crazy cannoli cake she wanted. I get all three hundred guests to like their seating assignments.”

“Impressive.”

“And when she and Bobby get up for her first dance, I play her old favorite love song, first music I ever remembered hearing as a kid.”

“That’s really sweet.”

“It was an old recording of my dad’s.”

“What–”

“The concert where they met.”

Mike facepalms.

“I saw the look on her face, but she didn’t tell anyone else. All anyone else saw was a wedding that looked twice as expensive as we could afford, and all of the sudden I had a business.”

While it’s a little late to fire him, Mike could still take back the whole “best man” gig. Harvey braces for being thrown out of the house.

What Mike says is, “You were twenty-two?”

“Yeah.”

“And you wouldn’t sabotage a wedding now?”

“No.”

Regrettably enough.

“Well . . . I do I see why you did it.”

“Let’s switch topics,” Harvey says. He chucks subtlety out the window, because he can’t dwell on his parents tonight, not in this home Mike thinks he’s building with Rachel. “I wanna play poker with you.”

The kettle whistles right as Mike starts chuckling. “You know I can count cards, right?”

“I’m not going to play the odds, I’ll play the man.”

“Well–” Mike pours the water into a teapot that’s filled with cinnamon and honest-to-god cloves– “in the chance that you beat me, which I’m not admitting is possible, I’d be sacrificing even more of Robert’s money to you. And I can’t in good conscience.”

“Then don’t play for money.” They can play for peppermint candies, there’s a jarful by the stove, or they can each assign a thousand imaginary dollars to themselves–

“You talking strip poker?”

Harvey’s eyes snap up. “I wasn’t. But . . .”

He can’t say this. It goes against approximately one hundred rules that he’s been setting for himself since he was sixteen.

“But I have four of the best strippers in the city on speed dial, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Harvey? Joking again.”

“I guessed.”

No, he didn’t guess, but he’s said it all with enough of a smirk to have plausible deniability. Now blushing and awkward, Mike puts a cup of tea in front of him, and he shuts up and drinks it. He wants to hate it on principle because it’s tea, _spiced tea with cinnamon and cloves_. He can’t pull it off, because it’s too good to ignore.

Mike’s too good to ignore.

And Harvey’s been telling himself that this is his parent’s marriage all over again, that he has to keep Rachel’s secret or else he’s going to ruin Mike’s life like he ruined his dad’s, but maybe he’s drawing the wrong damn analogy. Maybe this is before his parents’ wedding, and he’s got a time machine and the chance to warn his dad off the worst mistake of his life, which if he thinks about it would lead to paradox and the end of his own existence. That’s a moot point though, since he’s not literally Ebenezer Scrooge and time travel isn’t real.

Anyway, for Mike, he would take those odds.

“We can play for points too,” Mike says. “A thousand each?”

“Sure.”

So they start playing as Mike warms the milk for cocoa with nutmeg– which is a Christmas cliche Harvey’s hated at at least ten holiday weddings, but he can’t summon his usual resentment– and they’re surprisingly well-matched. Harvey finds that he can’t read Mike perfectly, sometimes Mike zigs when he expects him to zag, or maybe Mike’s just plain indecisive.

Mike tops off Harvey’s eggnog by pouring bourbon straight from the bottle, which is as good a strategy as any until Mike pours _himself_ a tall glass too.

He takes a large gulp, and Harvey’s eyes are drawn to how his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows.

A couple rounds in they’re still close to even despite a series of brilliant maneuvers on Harvey’s part, and Mike steps away to serve their hot cocoa. Harvey’s determined not to be astounded this time. It doesn’t work.

Mike turns on his coffee machine to brew a full pot of gingerbread-flavored coffee and returns to the game. He slides onto his counter stool, perched by the short side of his kitchen table while Harvey sits at the corner of the long edge. At this angle Harvey has no chance of peeking at Mike’s cards even if he considered such charlatanism, but he has a perfect view of Mike’s face.

Harvey screws up the round by folding too early, and he drains his cocoa only to find it’s sticking in his throat like hot, sugary guilt.

He can’t let Mike marry Rachel without knowing what she did.

Mike only gloats a little as he deals them new hands. Harvey looks at his cards and–

Jesus Christ.

He looks up, and Mike’s studying his cards too intensely.

“What would your dream wedding look like?” Mike asks quietly. “I raise you fifty points.”

“Up to the limit?”

“Yeah.”

It throws Harvey off for more reasons than one. Last Christmas, he would have coolly replied that his dream is to never have a wedding.

“Rooftop wedding,” he says, staring down at his cards. “Top of a skyscraper. I’d keep everything minimal, for flowers just have boutonnieres. I raise _you_ fifty points.”

Though they can both trade in some of their cards now, neither of them do.

“Maybe orchids.”

“What?”

“For the flowers.”

“Oh. Yeah, big ones.”

Mike chuckles. “I raise you fifty points. How many people?”

“Fifty people, max.”

“To keep it exclusive?”

“To keep it honest. I raise you fifty.”

He’s anything but honest tonight. The hypocrisy stings like hail in his face.

“I raise you fifty. Would you have a theme?”

“Nothing obvious, but I’d sneak some film jokes in.”

“‘Take me to bed or lose me forever’?”

“‘Show me the way home, honey,’” Harvey quips automatically. “I raise you fifty.”

Mike takes a long swig of his bourbon. “I raise you fifty.”

Harvey’s flying too damn high, drunk on his good luck, on his bad luck, on nutmeg cocoa and eggnog and Mike. “I raise you fifty.”

“She’d be lucky.”

“Who?”

“Your bride.”

“Or groom.”

“Groom?”

Goddammit.

Harvey keeps his eyes locked on the cards. “You never know.”

“I raise you fifty. And yeah, your groom would be lucky too.”

There’s not a trace of judgment in Mike’s voice, and Harvey’s melting like the marshmallows in his cocoa cup. He had a hundred rationalizations for keeping his mouth shut about Rachel’s infidelity, about all the risks of this marriage, but when he grasps at them they’re gone, just empty puffs of sugar. “I raise you fifty.”

“I raise you fifty.”

“I raise you fifty.”

They keep edging forward, both going for broke. One of them will have to leave the game forever.

“I call,” Harvey says when he’s out of money, laying down his cards. “Flush.”

He lays down five hearts.

Mike squints at it and then lays down his own hand. “Flush.”

He lays down five hearts.

“Well,” Harvey murmurs, “what are the chances of that?’

“1.8 times ten to the negative eight,” Mike replies promptly. “Approximately.”

So this is how it ends; Harvey’s king falls to Mike’s ace. Harvey loses practically everything to him and steps away gracefully.

“We could rewrite the rules,” Mike muses after a moment. “Start fresh, new accounts for both of us.”

When he looks up from the hearts with eyes sparkling like fairy lights, Harvey’s heart breaks in a hundred new ways.

Mike is doomed, and Harvey knows it. If Mike doesn’t know about Rachel, if he’s not perfectly content with lingering feelings for other men, with past adulterous kisses going into his wedding, then when he walks into the church tomorrow he’ll be entering his own personal hell. If Harvey loves Mike, he has a moral obligation to tell him. Some half-hearted voice points out that maybe he doesn’t love Mike, not that way, not that much. He tells it to shut up.

“Mike, I have to tell you somethi-”

Mike kisses him.

The world goes soft, like the hazy glow around a streetlight during a snowfall, the pure rolling shimmer of fresh snow. A soprano’s voice filters through the wall from the apartment next door, floating on the high notes of _Silent Night_.

Harvey closes his eyes.

Lets his heart grow three sizes.

 _Beeeeeep_!

The coffee maker shocks him back to reality, yet he can’t form a coherent thought. Apparently neither can Mike, who immediately starts babbling: “Oh my god, Harvey, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

Harvey silences him with one hand to his cheek. Glancing up at the mistletoe hanging above them he lets his fingers trail down Mike’s face, along his jawline, and then he does the only thing a mature, full-grown man in this position can do.

He flees.

* * *

Upon reviewing the facts of the case, Harvey decides to request a universal injunction on romance. Surely Scottie could manage that.

There’s a gun to his head, and no way out. He shouldn’t tell Mike about Rachel’s infidelity without telling her about his. Hell with “shouldn’t,” he _can’t_ tell either of them, because if he does Mike and Rachel will undoubtedly land in a screaming match that will both break the wedding and redirect the full capabilities of Rand, Kaldor and Zane towards a new mission, namely suing A Specter Affair out of business.

Harvey’s can’t shake the terror, or the taste of mint and bourbon and cinnamon and cocoa that refuses to fade. He falls asleep that way, dreaming of how Mike tasted like Christmas.

* * *

Sometimes, the only option is to let the gun go off and hope without reason for blanks.

Harvey wakes up early, the way he always does on the day of a wedding. He checks his email. Already the problems are piling up– a shortage of poinsettias, a violist with frostbitten fingers. When he arrives at the church Donna hands him an itemized list of emergencies to tackle, enough to take him through the ceremony without having a moment to breathe. She knows exactly what she’s doing.

He thanks her.

He tackles all the disasters one by one. He directs deliveries. He threatens vendors. He drowns himself in the storm of holly and candles and red satin ribbons, too numb to summon any of his usual Christmas spite. He’s more ruthless than he means to be, and so he gets a moment of peace before the crowds descend, right after he sends the frostbitten violist flying out in tears. He surveys the church, not to check the balance or the freshness of the garlands, just to take it in.

It’s the most beautiful wedding he’s ever done. He can’t quantify it, the gentle light of the candles, the majestic silence of the marble columns. There’s a grace in this church that he can’t rationally explain.

He’s poured his soul into this.

Rachel’s in a back room of the church with her bridesmaids, changing into her white gossamer dress. This is how it ends, with her floating down the aisle to the _Waltz of the Flowers_. With her and Mike reciting their Nutcracker poem and then their real vows, promises to love and cherish each other, and Harvey prays for this one Christmas miracle, that when they make those vows they’ll mean them.

* * *

Harvey and Donna are both arguing with a photographer– not the one they hired, but an alleged “digital influencer” who’s posting shots of the wedding on social media. Harvey would have thrown her out ten minutes ago when she knocked over a lit candelabra because it screwed up her filter, but then she revealed that she’s actually a client of Rachel’s. “Don’t you dare touch me! I’ll have Rachel sue you, and then I’ll have my fifty million Instagram followers destroy your little business.”

Harvey’s torn between laughing and threatening to have his own fifty thousand followers destroy her obviously hired fifty million bots, but Mike saves him.

“Harvey,” he calls at just that moment, appearing on the other side of the church.

“Donna, I’m leaving this to you.”

He unceremoniously abandons them both to walk down the aisle to Mike. Harvey immediately sees Mike’s emergency, wrinkled and askew around his neck.

“So your bowtie also had too much eggnog, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mike murmurs. “Could you–”

“Yeah.” He lifts his hands to raise Mike’s collar and slowly, gently rescue his tie.

For a moment there's silence.

“I didn’t mean to, last night,” Mike says under his breath.

“I know.”

“I don’t regret it though.”

Harvey’s eyes dart up to meet his.

“Should I?”

Harvey’s eyes slide back down to Mike’s neck, to his own fingers lingering too long on the skin of Mike’s neck.

“Harvey, I just didn’t–” He tips his head forward, seeking out Harvey’s gaze, and swallows hard. “I don’t want to go through life spending every Christmas alone.”

What can he possibly say to that?

“You don’t have to,” Harvey says, uncharacteristically hesitant as he folds the tie around Mike’s shoulders.

“What are you saying?”

The fraud ends here.

“That if you want me, I’ll be with you every Christmas.” Mike’s breath hitches, but Harvey presses on, looping the tie around his finger, drawing it into its knot. “And if you want me, I’ll stick with you through law school, or reading the law, or making coffee for the rest of your life.”

He glances up and finds Mike’s lips parted, in disbelief or perhaps awe.

“Harvey, are you serious right now?”

“Cards on the table, Mike.”

“And you’re giving . . .”

Mike trails off, but he recognized the quote. And Harvey recognizes his response, because he’s heard that line at least 280 times.

 _I give you all of me_.

“Maybe you’re crazy, Mike. But I’ve been assured by multiple reliable sources, some with doctorates in the field, that I’m entirely out of my mind.”

He proves it by lifting his hands from the tie to Mike’s cheeks, cupping his face by the goddamn altar. There’s an implicit question in his declaration, because it means nothing if he gives all of himself only to get nothing in return, and Mike’s hesitating, trying to stutter out an answer–

“Harvey!”

Now Donna’s snapping at him, and he wheels around; logically she’s too far away to have seen him touch Mike’s face, but on the other hand she knows all. He braces for yet another argument when she instead calls, “Code White.”

In a hospital context, “Code White” is frequently a warning that a patient has careened out of control, typically turning to violence. Harvey would swear in a court of law that that’s not why his firm uses the term to refer to bridal catastrophes. It would be perjury.

With a groan, Harvey rushes back up the aisle, following Donna to the unusually loud dressing room. Donna knocks on the door and then throws it open without waiting for a response.

Harvey surveys the situation. Rachel’s there with her parents and bridesmaids. Her hair and make-up’s done, though the mascara’s starting to smudge, but neither she nor her bridesmaids have changed yet.

“What’s the emergency?” Harvey says, calmly as he can.

“This is ridiculous,” Rachel spits back. “I made my plans, I had a perfectly clear outline–”

“We can forget the outline,” Laura replies, reaching out to soothe her.

“Forget the– you’re the one who’s been obsessing over the outlines!”

“Because you weren’t excited, Rachel, I was only trying to connect so you would _talk_ to–”

“Everyone–” Harvey raises his voice, and they mercifully shut up– “can you please explain what the issue is?”

Rachel half-scoffs, half-sobs. “The shoes!”

She points at a shoebox. Harvey gingerly removes the cover and peers inside to find a perfectly inoffensive pair of ballet shoes, light pink with pretty ribbons to tie around her ankles.

Harvey frowns. “Wrong size?”

“No," Rachel says, and that’s entirely a sob. “No, Harvey, they’re rose gold.”

“Right.”

“And I ordered _ivory_.”

“Ah.” Harvey emphatically does not laugh. “Well, fortunately the extra tulle in your skirt’s going to hide it.”

“That’s what I said,” Samantha bursts out, throwing her hands in the air and nearly blowing Harvey’s poker face to shreds. He settles for shooting her a knowing look.

“I don’t want to hide it,” Rachel retorts, suddenly collapsing onto a chair, digging her hands into her neat ballet bun. “I don’t want to have to hide anything, I don’t want to use loopholes and skate by on technicalities. I’ve _dreamed_ of this for most of my life, and yes, I’ve messed around with other possibilities, but at the end of the day I’ve put in my work for this. Is it that much to ask for someone else to act sane? Is it so awful to want things to go even approximately according to a sensible, thought-out plan?”

“Look, Rachel–” Robert now barges in– “you tell me the store you got these from, I’ll go back right now and demand that they give you your ivory shoes–”

“Honey,” Laura whispers. “It’s not about the colors.”

It usually isn’t.

“Um.”

They all turn. Mike slipped in unnoticed at some point, his eyes now fixed on Rachel’s. Both their eyes shimmer with tears.

She doesn’t look away even as she addresses all the rest of them. “Could we have a couple minutes to talk?”

* * *

So this is how it ends, in a quiet conversation behind closed doors. Harvey doesn’t eavesdrop– though Donna has to pull Samantha away from the door– instead jumping into action. He’s seen this a few times before, and he knows his work isn’t done. There are guests to disappoint and vendors to alert in an optimal order that minimizes costs. Regardless, Robert’s going to lose a lot of money unless he comes up with some miraculous Christmas loophole.

By the time Harvey can spare a moment, Mike’s nowhere to be found, and his phone’s off. Harvey hasn’t received the answer to the question he didn’t ask, and it occurs to him that the answer is “no.”

But he looks at the altar. It’s decked with enough boughs of holly for multiple halls as well as an arrangement of poinsettias, just as Rachel requested. Yet due to the unexpected shortage, the flowers are artificial– well-made, but ultimately made of cloth.

Mike escaped a life of fraud. Possibly a lifelong prison sentence, depending on how far Harvey stretches the metaphor.

He’ll settle for one miracle.

* * *

He gets a second one while stuck in the office, almost at midnight on Christmas Eve. There’s a knock on the door, and he spins around in his chair and finds Mike in his office, wearing the most god-awful Christmas sweater with Rudolph on it.

“You like?” Mike strides in, twirls, and nearly falls over like a drunken runway model. “I’ve decided Rudolph’s the most relatable part of Christmas.”

“Let me guess. You like the teamwork and the gifts for kids.”

“No, I like how his talent made him feel sucky until capitalism managed to exploit it.” Harvey snorts, and he beams back at him. “It’s a relatable story, never said it was uplifting.”

“All right, spoilsport, you wanna sit down?”

“Like you don’t love my sport-spoiling.” Mike plops down in the chair opposite him.

“How are you, Mike?”

He says it with a small inscrutable smile, ready for any answer.

“I’m good.”

Harvey can’t imagine a more cliched exchange, yet for them at this moment it means the world.

“Rachel and I had an informative discussion,” Mike continues. “We talked through a lot of things we should have hashed out ages ago, we just . . .”

“Assumed it’d all work out perfectly?” Harvey cocks an eyebrow.

“Yeah. But,” he sighs, “turns out she also had lingering feelings for another man.”

“Mike–”

“I know she told you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Mike frowns. “No, you’re not the one who has to be sorry in this scenario. I get that it’s complicated. Especially for you.”

“Wasn’t my secret to tell.” He pauses, inhaling deep. “And I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m flattered that not even spiting Rachel could convince you to.”

Harvey barks out a laugh. “That’s one way to see it.”

“That’s how I see it. And seriously, Harvey?” He leans in, hands clasped, elbows on his knees. “I am sorry you got dragged into all that.”

“It’s my job.”

Now Mike lifts his eyebrows. “Do you typically kiss clients for your job?”

“No,” he easily quips, “that’s a special service. I’m still figuring out how to charge Robert for it.”

“Oh, god,” Mike chuckles. “You know, I hope Rachel gets to have a wedding that beautiful, just with some guy who’s more of a match.”

“I’ve handled many repeat clients,” he deadpans.

Mike laughs again at that, but then his expression changes. Harvey knows this look; it means Mike’s about to say something that’ll make Harvey want to throttle him, and Mike knows it, and he’s going to say it anyway.

“Did you know you were half the reason I didn’t get cold feet earlier?”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“I mean,” he stammers, “you put so much work into it all, into trying to make it work for both of us, I didn’t want to waste all your effort.”

Harvey was right about the strangulation bit. Now he’s split between overwhelming tenderness and a desire to explore that instinct to strangle Mike somewhere other his glass-walled workplace.

“For what it’s worth,” he finally says, “most of the money and effort wasn’t wasted.” He hands Mike an invitation to the Paulsen-Wheeler engagement party, hosted on Christmas Day at the Plaza’s Terrace Room. A sly smirk creeps across his face. “If you want to create a Zane family meltdown, you can be my plus-one.”

“Yeah, I think not.”

Harvey freezes.

“I’m not going to blow up the Zane family twice in one holiday,” he says. “But if you want . . . we can go ice skating at Rockefeller Center afterwards.”

“I’m genuinely impressed with how cliche that idea is.”

“I know, I hate it,” Mike chirps, “but who knows? Maybe it’ll be fun with you.”

“. . . Okay, fine.”

“And then we can get hot chocolate, and we can take selfies in front of the Christmas tree, and we can go see the light show at Saks, and–”

“ _Get out._ ”

Mike leaps up and scampers out, mischief managed. With a roll of his eyes Harvey shakes his head and pretends to go back to his work, but first he glances at the time.

“Hey!” He rises and goes to the door, calling down the hallway.

Mike turns around. “Yeah?”

A grin crosses Harvey’s face against his will, but he doesn’t even bother fighting it. “Merry Christmas!”

* * *

Two years later, Mike and Harvey nearly show up late to an appointment at Westminster Abbey.

(“How do you _still_ not know how to manage a bowtie?”)

They take their places on either of the side of the altar, each standing by one of the brides. Harvey shares a secret smile with Donna; they’ve both known he’d be her best man for over a decade.

Mike, on the other hand, didn’t quite expect to be where he is. But after he decided to take the New York bar exam instead of the LSAT and aced it anyway, Harvey made some introductions, and Mike found someone sufficiently out of their mind to hire him without a law degree, for the express purpose of using a corporate law firm’s funds to tackle tricky pro bono cases on behalf of disadvantaged, often orphaned children.

Which is how he ended up as Samantha Wheeler’s personal associate and groomsman, alongside Robert Zane.

Mike hasn’t gotten a perfect happy-ever-after. Robert Zane’s tried to throw him out of the firm more times than anyone else can count, once because of Rachel, once because of his lack of qualifications, once because he started dating his and Rachel’s wedding planner (entirely out of nowhere!), and then many more times for his stubborn ethical stands. But Samantha’s taken his side at work, and Harvey’s backed him up at home, and finances-wise he’s had the advantage of dating a guy who makes as much money as a banker, consultant or lawyer and gives him the space to do what he wants.

It’s convenient having Harvey around, but that’s not why Mike’s planning to not ask a particular question tonight.

That night, he pulls a file out of his suitcase. “I have a proposal for you.”

“Yeah?”

He hands Harvey the file, filled with four squares of paper in different but– in his opinion– complementary colors, and waits. Harvey looks at him, then the colors, then back at him.

“I’m sorry, Mike, but I can’t.”

“You– what?”

“Coral and teal? At my wedding? Are you crazy?”

“Yes!”

“Do you actually care about any of these colors?”

“No!”

Harvey lines up the shot carefully, then hurls the file from his bed into the hotel garbage can. “So why don’t you leave the planning to me?”

“I do!”

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Sway, happy holidays! I hope you and all other Marvey fans have a wonderful winter filled with light and good cheer.
> 
> (Special thanks to [statusquo_ergo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo/works), who checked my color palettes, checked my statistics, complained most helpfully about Christmas, waded through this story at at least three messy stages, and was all-around the best cheerleader I could ask for. She also made this lovely [moodboard](https://frivoloussuits.tumblr.com/post/181914731380/statusquoergo-mike-is-a-barista-rachel-is-a)!)
> 
> I wrote another coffee shop AU for MSS! [Here it is if you're interested.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17133431)
> 
> Someone plagiarized part of this fic. This is the original.


End file.
